Hamas rocket strike halts airline flights to Israel

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: A rocket fired from Gaza on Tuesday led airlines to halt flights to Israel, as the UN chief urged an end to a conflict that has killed more than 630 Palestinians. As the violence entered its third week, the United States and Egypt discussed cease-fire proposals in Cairo, and the Palestinian leadership sought to coax Hamas to end hostilities. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to Tel Aviv, appealed to Israel and Hamas to “stop fighting” and “start talking,” but neither side appeared willing to do so. Israel insisted it would press on with its punishing aerial and ground assault until it destroys cross-border tunnels used by Hamas to attack the Jewish state, while Hamas continued to fire rockets and inflicted more casualties on the army. One rocket crashed just a few kilometers (miles) north of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion international airport prompting the US Federal Aviation Authority to ban commercial flights to and from Israel for at least 24 hours. And the European Aviation Safety Agency advised all carriers to avoid Tel Aviv “until further notice.” It was the first time such measures had been taken since the 1990-1991 Gulf war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to US Secretary of State John Kerry to get the FAA ban rescinded. “Netanyahu spoke this evening with ... Kerry and asked him to act to restore flights by American airline companies to Israel,” sources in Netanyahu’s office told AFP. Kerry said the order would be reviewed within in a day and told Netanyahu the ban was solely due to safety concerns, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Following top-level talks in Cairo, Ban went to Israel to deliver his views in person as the 15-day conflict showed no sign of easing. “My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting, start talking and take on the root causes of the conflict so that we are not at the same situation in the next six months or a year,” he said. In Cairo, Kerry discussed cease-fire proposals with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, with both voicing guarded hopes of an end to the violence. AFP